Fox News' Twitter account was hacked yesterday, with rogue tweets stating US president Barack Obama had been assassinated.
A total of six tweets were sent from the @FoxNewsPolitics account to its more than 34 000 followers. It took the news agency close to 10 hours to delete the fake posts.
The first post said: “BREAKING NEWS: President @BarackObama assassinated, 2 gunshot wounds have proved too much. It's a sad 4th for #america. #obamadead RIP.”
The hackers then also went on to post tweets wishing US vice-president Joe Biden the “best of luck”.
FoxNews.com reported it had alerted the US Secret Service, which would conduct an investigation into the matter.
Fox News Digital VP and GM Jeff Misenti said Twitter has been asked to conduct a detailed investigation in order to prevent any future unauthorised access to the Fox News accounts.
“FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created,” said a statement.
According to reports, a group called “Script Kiddies” (said to be loosely associated with Anonymous) has taken credit for the Fox News hack.
Yet another hack
The latest hack adds to the long list of online attacks on corporations and governments since the Sony PlayStation Network attack in April.
Fox Broadcasting was hacked in April, when the e-mails and passwords of its employees were accessed.
In May, the Web site of US television station PBS was hacked by LulzSec, with a post claiming the rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive.
US defence firm Lockheed Martin also came under significant cyber attack. Data storage firm EMC was forced to offer to replace millions of potentially compromised "SecurID" electronic keys after hackers used data stolen from its RSA security division to break into Lockheed Martin's network.
The personal information of over 283 000 customers at Honda Canada was also breached. The company said the stolen data included names, addresses, vehicle identification numbers and financing account numbers.
Meanwhile, Australia's government urged companies to tighten vigilance after the cyber attacks launched offshore against some of the world's biggest resource firms, warning hi-tech threats are intensifying.
In June, the US government scrambled to assess if security had been compromised after Google revealed a hack attack targeting US officials. The White House later renewed its calls for stiffer sentences for breaking into government and private computer networks.
In another government-related attack, hackers broke into a Gannett database containing personal information about subscribers to publications read by US government officials, military leaders and rank-and-file soldiers.
The International Monetary Fund was also targeted, with CIO Jonathan Palmer telling staff the fund had detected suspicious file transfers, and that an investigation had shown a desktop computer "had been compromised and used to access some fund systems”.
Sony Pictures Entertainment also confirmed that some of its Web sites were breached, saying it was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify the attackers.
Japanese video game developer Sega disclosed that information belonging to 1.3 million customers had been stolen from its database.
Cyber hackers also breached an Electronic Arts Web site, with user information such as birth dates, phone numbers and mailing addresses compromised.
As hacker activity intensified in June, hackers blocked the Spanish police's Web site in a reprisal attack following arrests of Anonymous group members.
This week, Internet vigilante hacker group Anonymous claimed to have broken into an Apple server, and published usernames and passwords for one of the company's Web sites.
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